“Older,” I said, then wished I hadn’t spoken so quickly. “Let me bring the oranges in. I’ll be right back.”

I lifted the carton and stepped inside the house I’d grown up in. The decor hadn’t changed in thirty years. As I walked to the tiny kitchen, I ignored the framed photographs of my boxing matches and magazine covers.

Every conversation in South Philly was some iteration of you remember, right? But Tabitha Tyler wasn’t a person you could easily forget. She’d been two grades above me. And in high school, I had a crush on her that rivaled the size of the fucking sun.

She was a cheerleader. She wrote for the school paper. She was friendly, popular, never without a giant smile. And she was pretty in a way that had tied my tongue every time we talked. Tabitha grew up just three streets away. For two years, until she graduated, we walked to school together every Wednesday and Thursday morning, Tabitha chatting away while I nervously tried not to trip and fall.

But she was nice to everyone. And there wasn’t anything that original about the shy kid having a crush on the beautiful, popular girl.

I pushed open the storm door and shook off the memory. I hadn’t seen her since she graduated. Tabitha had gotten out of this neighborhood in a way most people didn’t, going to college in LA. I assumed she spent her days driving a convertible down a street lined with palm trees, now even more out of my league.

“Have you seen Eddie?” I asked everyone. “I got oranges for him too.”

“Speak of the devil,” Midge said, pointing over her shoulder with her gardening gloves. “He must have seen me over here with my plants and decided to show me up.”

I flashed her a warning look. She shrugged. “What? You don’t think it’s true? Natalia told me he buys organic soil and sneaks it into his pots when he thinks we’re not looking. Organic, can you believe it? Like he’s so fancy over there?”

I rolled my eyes as I crossed the street. My parents, Alice, and Eddie were the old-timers on this block. Had lived here for most—or all of—their lives. Midge and Eddie’s flower wars were competitive but lacked any real heat. If he ever saw my parents facing any kind of insults or discrimination, he was always the first to step in and protect them if they needed it.

Eddie stepped onto his Astroturf-lined porch and lit a cigarette, still in his bathrobe. He was Italian American, like my parents, and a decade older. He spent most of his days spying on people and trading intel with Alice.

“Hey, how ya doin’, Dean,” he grumbled, then brightened when he saw the fruit. “Did you bring those for me?”